Earliest Asian discoglossid frog from western Liaoning

Based on a superbly preserved skeleton, a new anuran taxon has been named and described from the Yixian Formation (Upper Jurassic/Lower Cretaceous), Liaoning Province, northeastern China. This discovery documents the first discoglossid fossil from China, the earliest record of the group in Asia, and the only second Mesozoic discoglossid known from fully articulated material in the world. The family Discoglossidae is widely perceived as a primitive anuran group, but has no definite fossils found in collaboration with their recent distribution in Asia. The new discovery from Liaoning extends the temporal range of the group in Asia back at least 120 million years, and provides valuable fossil material for study of anatomical details of early discoglossids, as well as of historical distribution of this primitive anuran group.